Washington D.C. –
Today, twenty two members of the US House Committee on Oversight and Government
Reform issued a statement of ‘No Confidence” in Drug Enforcement Administrator
Michele Leonhart for continued failed leadership during numerous scandals and
direct conflicts with the Obama Administration. The bipartisan statement was
issued in the wake of congressional hearings investigating a sex scandal
involving DEA agents in South America who purchased sex workers with American
tax dollars.

“There’s simply no
excuse for the outrageous behavior of the DEA’s so-called leadership,” said
Maj.
Neill Franklin (Ret.), executive director
for Law
Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP), a criminal
justice group working to end the drug war. “Leonhart just helps us add to the
list of reasons of why we need to rethink our entire approach to drug
policy.”

The Justice
Department’s Office of the Inspector General currently has six open
investigations into scandals perpetrated by the DEA involving murder and
torture, covert data collection of Americans used for evidence fabrication, and
a massacre in Honduras. In addition, Leonhart has repeatedly flaunted
administration policy and opposed policies based on scientific evidence and best
practices.

LEAP is committed to
ending decades of failed policy that have created underground markets and gang
violence, fostered corruption and racism, and largely ignored the public health
crisis of addiction. The war on drugs has cost more than one trillion dollars,
yielded only disastrous outcomes, and ultimately diverted the penal system’s
attention away from more important crimes.